Route 66 was named one of the 100 Most Endangered Sites on the World Monuments Watch, with various sections between Chicago, IL and Los Angeles, CA threatened by development pressures and abandonment, effective 2008.
Connecting Chicago to Los Angeles, became the first continuous paved highway in 1938, officially beginning it’s journey of a series of dirt roads, wagon trails, Indian trails and a few streets and state roads on November 11, 1926.
Times were grim, the stock market crashed, the drought and dust bowl raged. Hope was Route 66.
“Route 66 is the path of a people in flight, refugees from dust and shrinking land, from the thunder of the tractors and shrinking ownership, from the deserts slow northward invasion, from the twisting winds that howl up out of Texas, from the floods that bring no richness to the land and steal what little is there. From all of these the people are in flight, and they come into 66 from the tributary side roads, from the wagon trails and the rutted country roads…Route 66 is The Mother Road, the road of flight.” - John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, 1939.
After World War II, America was on the move. Folks flocked to Route 66 to see the “real America,” with it’s flashing neon signs punctuating the scenery. Mom and Pop businesses and homemade roadside attractions mixed it up with the Art Deco and Streamline Moderne styles of the day. Does it get any better? Remnants and relics of it’s heyday still remain, but are disappearing daily. It’s time to get in the car and go!
Well if you ever plan to motor west,
Just take my way , that’s the highway that’s the best.
Get your kicks on Route sixty-six.
Well it winds from Chicago to LA
More than two-thousand miles all the way.
Get your kicks on Route sixty-six.
Well it goes through St. Louie down to Missouri
Oklahoma City looks oh so pretty.
You’ll see Amarillo, Gallup, New Mexico
Flagstaff, Arizona, don’t forget Winona,
Kingsman, Barstow, San Bernardino.
Won’t you get hip to this timely tip
And think you’ll take that California trip.
Get your kicks on route sixty-six.
(written by Bobby Troup, immortalized by Nat King Cole in 1946)